What Will Happen to Your Body If You Plank for 5 Minutes in 2 Months?

Planking is a time-saving exercise that can deliver! You can do it practically everywhere and at any given moment — in your living room while watching your favorite reality show, in your kitchen while waiting for the pecan pie’s crust to turn brown, or in the copy room while waiting for an office document to be reproduced 100 times.

Fitness experts recommend for you to sustain a proper planking position for 5 minutes. But if you are a beginner, feel free to maintain it at a shorter time period — eventually, you will be able to hold a plank for much longer durations as you get better and better at doing it! Try making your planks about 5 seconds longer each time for progress.

So what will happen if you perform 5-minute planks for 2 straight months? Here they are:

A Flatter Belly

Planking is an unparalleled exercise for the abdominal muscles. It’s exactly for this reason why planking daily can help you attain the washboard abs of your wildest dreams. If you loathe crunches and sit-ups as they leave you lightheaded and hurt your back, consider doing planks instead so that you may have your belly flattened.

Pain-Free Back

Speaking of hurting your back, did you know that planking everyday is actually good for your spine? It’s because planks help strengthen those back muscles that support your spine. What’s more, you will notice that your spine stays in a neutral position as you plank, so it’s kept out of harm’s way — unlike when doing other abdominal exercises.

Improved Posture

Planking also helps improve your posture significantly. Due to this, you will look taller and more confident. Having good posture is not only beneficial for your image and poise, but also your lower back and hips. That’s because planking strengthens the core muscles necessary to keep the said areas of your body in optimum condition.

Better Balance

You can considerably improve your balance when you plank for 5 minutes for a couple of months. Having superb balance is important in your daily living as it allows you to carry out all sorts of physical tasks properly. In addition, having top-notch balance helps lower your risk of accidental falls and injuring yourself.

Enhanced Flexibility

You also need to be flexible so that you may perform various tasks with utmost efficiency. From reaching for a can of pineapples on the top shelf to vacuuming the underside of the sofa, these chores require you to be flexible. Oh, having superb flexibility courtesy of planking will also come in handy when it’s time to show off your dancing skills!

Stronger Bones

According to experts, weight-bearing exercises help keep your bones strong. Actually, planking can be regarded as one of those exercises because it requires you to support your entire body weight with your arms and legs. Having strong bones is crucial for the prevention of osteoporosis, which is characterized by bones becoming brittle.

Reduced Stress Levels

It’s common knowledge that exercising is a marvelous way to keep stress at bay. But if you’re too tired at the end of a busy day, you may have not much energy left to exercise. Fortunately, there is one routine that you can perform daily without having to expend lots of your remaining energy, and it’s called planking!

Better Mood

We all know that exercising causes your brain to be flooded with happy hormones, and that’s why it is deemed effective in combating depression. Something as simple as planking for 5 minutes a day can help lift your mood. And knowing that you are doing your figure and health a huge favor, you tend to feel much better after a session.

You can enjoy all of these things simply by planking for 5 minutes daily for 2 months. So what’s next after a couple of months? Just continue planking religiously to keep these perks around!

Weight Loss Tips Recommended by Personal Trainers

Weight loss is something that we all struggle with. Sometimes we are successful in reducing our weight but more often than not, the number in the weighing scale slowly creeps back up. Most of us have already tried the latest diet trend in the hopes that it will lead us to a better looking us, but then, life happens and we forget that we are on a diet or that we feel frustrated with the lack of results. Still, we keep on finding ways to get rid of the excess pounds that we are carrying. With that being said, it might be a good idea for us to stop for a while and take stock of what personal trainers have got to say about losing weight. Who knows? We might pick up a thing or two about their weight loss tips that we can apply in our day to day lives. Here are some suggestions that you might want to consider.

Stay away from booze and sugar

If you really want to lose weight then ditch the sugar and booze. These two are known to be calorie-laden which is why they contribute to weight gain. If you can’t stay away from drinking alcoholic beverages, you can limit to a glass for girls and two glasses for men. As for the refined sugars, there are natural sweeteners available such as honey and stevia.

Don’t go more than 3 hours without eating

Although the exact science for this is still being studied, it appears that eating snacks in between meals can help keep your blood sugar levels steady. This means that your energy level will remain stable throughout the day and less sugar or carb binges which can cause weight gain on your part.

Mix your exercises up

Another tip that personal trainers have given with regards to losing weight is to mix your fitness routine as much as possible. Sticking to the same program for months will cause you to hit a plateau in your progress which can make you feel frustrated with the lack of improvement. A better option would be to mix your exercises so that your muscles will remain guessing as to which muscle group will be tested. The best part is that you are constantly strengthening and conditioning your muscles for a more even looking physique.

Drink plenty of water

Who would have thought that even the simplest act can do your weight loss goal a whole lot of good? Drinking water constantly can help flush the toxins from your body while ensuring that your skin remains properly hydrated. Water can also help improve digestion so that your body will be able to absorb nutrients from the food that you eat better.

These are just a few tips that you might want to consider the next time you are planning on shedding weight. What’s great about these fitness tips is that they are simple enough to follow but will get you amazing results in no time.

Study: Dietary supplements won’t help you live longer

Doctors at Tufts University in Massachusetts, the US, say it’s pretty clear that supplement use has no benefit for the general population and is not a substitute for a healthy balanced diet.

Their research found that vitamins A and K, magnesium, zinc and copper were linked to a lower risk of death from heart disease or stroke — but only when they came from foods, abc7news.com wrote.

Coauthor Fang Fang Zhang, an associate professor of epidemiology at the Tufts University Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, said getting nutrients in the right quantities from food was associated with a longer life.

In fact, Zhang said some supplements even appear to have health risks. People who took high doses of calcium supplements had a 53 percent higher risk of dying from cancer than people who were not taking supplements,

However, if you have been diagnosed as deficient in a certain nutrient, don’t stop taking it without talking to your doctor first.

The research team used data from 30,000 US adults who participated in a National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey from 1999 to 2010.

Whitening products may damage teeth:Study

Teeth whitening products – that promise to make your smile brighter – may also be causing tooth damage, a study has found.

Scientists at Stockton University in the US found that hydrogen peroxide, the active ingredient in over-the-counter whitening strips, can damage the protein-rich dentin tissue found beneath the tooth’s protective enamel.

The tooth is made of three layers: the outer tooth enamel, an underlying dentin layer and connective tissue that binds the roots to the gum.

Most studies of whitening strips have focused on tooth enamel, which contains very little protein.

The team focused on dentin, which makes up most of the tooth and has high levels of protein, most of which is collagen.

It is well established that hydrogen peroxide can penetrate the enamel and dentin. Previous work by the researchers showed that collagen in the dentin layer decreased when teeth were treated with whitening strips.

“We sought to further characterise what the hydrogen peroxide was doing to collagen. We used entire teeth for the studies and focused on the impact hydrogen peroxide has on the proteins,” said Kelly Keenan, associate professor at Stockton University.

The researchers demonstrated that the major protein in the dentin is converted to smaller fragments when treated with hydrogen peroxide.

In additional experiments, they treated pure collagen with hydrogen peroxide and then analysed the protein using a gel electrophoresis laboratory technique that allows the protein to be visualised.

“Our results showed that treatment with hydrogen peroxide concentrations similar to those found in whitening strips is enough to make the original collagen protein disappear, which is presumably due to the formation of many smaller fragments,” Keenan said in the statement.

The researchers point out that their experiments did not address whether collagen and other proteins in the teeth can be regenerated, so it is unknown if the tooth damage is permanent.

Next, they plan to further characterise the protein fragments released when collagen is treated with hydrogen peroxide and determine if hydrogen peroxide has the same impact on other proteins in the teeth.

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